The roof at Tropicana Field, the home of the Tampa Bay Rays, sustained major damage because of high winds associated with Hurricane Milton, which made landfall Wednesday along Florida's Gulf Coast as a Category 3 storm.
According to the Rays, the Trop was built to withstand winds of up to 115 mph. The roof is supported by 180 miles of cables connected by struts in what the team calls the "world's largest cable-supported domed roof."
— ESPN
The Populous design in St. Petersburg (formerly called the 'ThunderDome') has existed mostly without sustaining significant storm damage since 1990. The roof system was made from 370,000 square feet of PTFE (fiberglass) Tensile Membrane manufactured by a New York company called Birdair, Inc.
The incident, which was captured on social media, sadly recalls damage sustained to the Louisiana Superdome during Hurricane Katrina for many Americans.
INSIDE LOOK ▶️ The MLB released footage from inside Tropicana Field as Hurricane Milton ripped its roof off.
Wind gusts over 100 mph were recorded in the area: https://t.co/q2ktAMiTik pic.twitter.com/llKNG9XTKg
— 10 Tampa Bay (@10TampaBay) October 10, 2024
Video courtesy 10 Tampa Bay/X
The MLB franchise, which is planning a new $1.3 billion ballpark with Hines for 2028, said they must now "assess the true condition" of the building before the viability of playing the 2025 season there can be determined.
8 Comments
Out of curiosity does anyone know the standard warranty on PTFE? If this was the original material from 1990 it did pretty well to survive this long (~35 years).
The facility was last renovated in 2014.
If you are in hurricane zones, you need to make the structures able to sustain 1,200 mph sustained wind speeds and gusts up to 1,500 MILES PER HOUR. Yes, you need to go to 10 TIMES what they are designing to. This would then also survive EF5 something tornados. Yeah, those middle finger of god things. Be able to handle the winds of Neptune. When you have that, you'll have structures that can survive the extreme conditions instead of being debris field.
It would be easier to just stop inhabiting the entire southern united states than build buildings to resist those sorts of forces hahaha
It would be easiest if humans stop inhabiting the planet. hahaha and yes, don't take the statement as a serious suggestion.
I know rest of the humans would kill me to use me as some ceremonial sacrifice in hopes of pleasing the divine... if I were to suggest that seriously.
Sounds like a fun thesis project though!
TBH, designing for reasonable results in hurricanes isn’t that hard. There are requirements and testing for systems and a lot of best practice type stuff to consider, but that’s just like anywhere else for any other issue.
Granted, designing for supersonic wind forces would be extreme beyond all measures but I agree with you that designing for reasonable results isn't that hard. In the 1960s, bridges were being designed for 300 mph. It isn't much more to beef up things to handle 25% higher wind speeds or gusts up to 50% higher than 300 mph. It's the strength of the connections and the sheeting and how they are connected to resist pull-up forces. Add to that, we learn a page or two from aeronautical engineering where the wings and structuring is designed to withstand the air flow of 1000 mph+ windforces. Think about it. When the aircraft is moving through the air at 1000 mph, the windflow over the wing would be 1000mph + any incoming windforce. Either the wind moves or the craft is moving.... same force... basically. The issue is when you have 1000 mph wind incoming and you are flying into it at 1000 mph... you would have the additive affect equivalent to being stationary with 2000 mph wind force. Basically the wind-tunnel simulation would simulate an aircraft at a certain speed (usually a scaled speed equivalent) with the model stationary and the wind flowing over at the equivalent scale wind speed. If your model is full-scale, then a full-scale wind speed be used. Humans have already built stuff for this level of forces. Now, we can build to higher level of wind forces but it begins at the design and engineering.
How we design homes in the region to resist the forces, the best approach is to learn a page from aerodynamic profile. So the wind flows smoothly over. Like a wing. To prevent the uplift, we must have very strong tie down and as much as possible, prevent wind forces coming under like tearing up your roof structure. There is many more things to consider in the overall process but if we keep building boxes with pitched roofs, we aren't solving a damn thing in those regions. Many traditional architecture like homes are basically European architecture typology that was imported from an area that has had little to no similar conditions whatsoever. What about a properly designed "regional" architectural style designed for the regional climate and conditions of today. These storms, perhaps stronger than many we studied in the past but not necessarily the strongest ever in the past but stronger than we have measurements before. However, we have already been engineering for these kinds of wind forces. We (People) done it for NASA projects. We done it for solving the mach barrier and beyond. Can we learn something from those and bring it into architecture? I think so.
We can start with public projects and places like stadiums and other major places of public accommodation. We can use these as places people can go to as emergency shelters. I don't think we can solve the residential problem very easily in the domain of SFRs with current issues like lot sizes as easily. There are various challenges... lot size, development regulations, cost, etc. Not impossible problems to solve but takes time to figure out a solution. I believe we can make places that survives that kind of forces we are experiencing now and likely in the next 200 years.
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